Que la fête commence!The French Influence on the Good
Life in New Orleans

Advertisements from Years Gone
By

Michel Antoine, a native of France, operated the
bakery at 24 Dumaine Street until his death in 1887. His wife carried on the family business at the same location after
his passing. [Business
Guide of New Orleans and Vicinity (Baltimore, 1889)]

This advertisement for Hypolite Begue's saloon appeared in the 1903 Souvenir Program for the International
Association of Chiefs of Police convention in the Crescent City.

Whether the frogs in Martin J. Leroy's advertisement were intended to underscore the establishment's French
atmosphere is unknown. They do make for a humorous touch in an otherwise dry business directory. [Business
Guide of New Orleans and Vicinity
(Baltimore, 1889)]

The Hotel and Restaurant de la Louisiane was founded by Louis Bezaudun in 1881 at 107 & 109 Customhouse
Street (now 725 Iberville) in a building constructed in 1837 as the residence of James Waters Zacharie. Later the
restaurant was managed by Bezaudu
n's nephew, Fernand Alciatore (brother of Jules Alciatore of Antoine's) and by succeeding generations of Alciatores.
Famed not only for its cuisine but for its decor (the magnificent leaded glass doors and Baccarat chandelier), in its
heyday, La Louisian
e entertained such luminaries as Sarah Bernhardt, Al Jolson, Theodore Roosevelt, Harry Houdini, William Jennings
Bryan and Rube Goldberg. An early guest, George Washington Cable, wrote in the restaurant's guest book, "La
Louisiane is one of the most begu
iling and satisfying spots in all my native city." [Business Guide of New Orleans and Vicinity (Baltimore,
1889)]

Lucien Lebrun operated bars and restaurants at various locations around the Vieux Carre during the 1880s. This
advertisement from 1889 encourages New Orleanians to, for lack of a better translation, "pig out." Two doors down
from the Lebrun establishme
nt was the building left to the city in 1845 by Abijah Fisk. That bequest was the beginning of the New Orleans Public
Library. The site is now occupied by a modern store built for the F. W. Woolworth company in the 1940s. [Business
Guide of New Orleans
and Vicinity (Baltimore, 1889)]

This advertisement for the Sazerac appeared in the 1903 Souvenir Program for the International Association
of Chiefs of Police convention in the Crescent City.

This 1889 advertisement documents a little-known, and probably short-lived, establishment on Magazine Street
operated by members of the same family that founded Commander's Palace in 1880. According to the 1888 city
directory, Anthony Commander worked
at least for a while as a bartender at the Sazerac Saloon. Interestingly, the Bon-Ton advertised here was only a few doors
down Magazine Street from the original location of the present-day Bon Ton Cafe. [Business Guide of New Orleans
and Vicinity> (
Baltimore, 1889)]